Disney+ performs poorly with Samsung TVs claims report

Users are unhappy with the performance of Disney+ on Samsung smart TVs, a new study has found.

While the family-friendly streamer has seen a widely positive response – to the tune of more than 50 million subscribers worldwide – a report from enhanced TV agency Terravolt suggests that there’s more that needs to be done from a technical perspective to keep users happy.

A study of the experience of watching through Tizen OS found that while there are no issues when it comes to watching video, there are multiple issues which hold the platform back. Some 78% of respondents said that they had experienced problems with usability with 76% reporting performance issues. These issues manifest in the form of long loading times of preview images and jerky scrolling.

More than two thirds (68%) said that the on screen keyboard was unintuitive, which can lead to an overcomplicated log-in process.

This seems to be an isolated case for Samsung TVs, with users not having the same issues on Apple TV and Web OS. The app is best received by users of Amazon Fire TV and Android TV devices.

However, Samsung is no small player in the market, with its Tizen OS TVs in six million households in Germany alone. The firm identifies this as “problematic for both Samsung and Disney”.

Tobias Künkel, managing director at TeraVolt, said: “Especially young users are hardly willing to compromise on functionality and might switch from Disney+ to Netflix to get a better performance. And more affluent users may turn away from Samsung to enjoy Disney+ on a better performing system. Either way, Samsung and Disney are the losers. It is important for both to catch up here.

“Actually, this is very unusual for Samsung. In our regular QA tests, Tizen always performs very well.  With adjustments on a manageable scale, it would be easy to achieve significant improvements for Disney+”.